1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention relates to web technology. More particularly, it relates to the creation and use of collaboration sites on the Internet or on an Intranet client/server system and to the graphical user interface used in Internet communications.
2. Background Art
The Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) provide intra-enterprise connectivity, inter-enterprise connectivity and application hosting on a larger scale than ever before. By exploiting the broadly available and deployed standards of the Internet and the WWW, system users and designers can leverage a single architecture to build client/server applications for internal use that can reach outside to customers, business partners and suppliers.
Collaboration requires simultaneous communication between individuals on a project team. Typically, this has required that the team members work in the same location. Phone and video conferencing has enabled some remote work on the part of team members. Also, because of the growth of the Internet, collaboration using web technologies has been attempted, primarily using electronic mail (E-mail), Internet chat rooms, electronic whiteboards, and conferencing software. The most useful has been E-mail, but this approach results in a large trail or thread of notes as collaboration on a project advances, and these notes have no home or place to reside which is accessible by all team members substantially instantaneously and simultaneously. People often enter such a thread at different points, and such threads are not efficient in coordinating the work of many different people on a team which may include in-house developers and others, such as remote contractors, outside of an enterprise's firewall.
In order for such disperse teams to have the same, or substantially the same, collaboration environment as individuals working in the same physical office, a system is required which facilitates instant messaging, voice conferencing, electronic white boarding, and text and non-text file exchange. Such a system needs to provide a collaborative electronic room, or space, which is easily configured for use by team members without substantial administrative or application development support, and preferably include both groupware and project oriented applications such as shared folders, file exchange, workflow, group calendars, threaded conversations, version control, file locking, file merging, and security.
There is a need in the art for such a system which is easy to set up and which enables diverse and remote teams to become immediately productive in a secure environment. It would be, further, most desirable to allow such a collaborative environment to be set up without administrative support, that is by members of the team itself, using a familiar and easy to use browser user interface. Members of the team, acting with manager or author authority, and using such a browser interface without involving administrative or application development support, need to be able to set up a folder or room for each project element, such as a source code component, with version control, workflow elements, and group calendaring for tracking the project or project element with respect to approvals and deadlines. Such a room needs to receive from team members reports and have them routed to appropriate team members for review, resolution, and approval.
The WWW is a collection of servers on an IP (Internet Protocol) network, such as the Internet, an Intranet or an Extranet, that utilize the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Hereinafter, “Internet” 100 will be used to refer to any IP network.
HTTP is a known application protocol that provides users with access to files, which can be in different formats, such as text, graphics, images, sound, and video, using a standard page description language known as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Among a number of basic document formatting functions, HTML allows software developers to specify graphical pointers on displayed web pages, commonly referred to as “hyperlinks,” that point to other web pages resident on remote servers. Hyperlinks commonly are displayed as highlighted text or other graphical image on the web page. Selection of a hyperlink with a pointing device, such as a computer mouse, causes the local computer to download the HTML associated with the web page from a remote server. The browser then renders the HTML into the displayed web page.
Web pages accessed over the Internet, whether by a hyperlink, opening directly via an “open” button in the browser, or some other means, are commonly downloaded into the volatile cache of a local computer system. In a computer system, for example, the volatile cache is a high-speed buffer that temporarily stores web pages from accessed remote web sites. The volatile cache thus enables a user to quickly review web pages that were already downloaded, thereby eliminating the need to repeat the relatively slow process of traversing the Internet to access previously viewed web pages. This is called local caching.
There is a need in the art for a system and method for enhancing browsing in collaboration space of collections of links. These link collections exist in a variety of formats which users need to be able to quickly visit in any order. For example, a random access UI is needed to What's New and Search Results links. These items can reside in more than room, producing potentially brutal context switches from one link to the next. Also, newcomers or casual users of the collaboration space have trouble knowing how to get started and where they can go in a QuickPlace, and would be greatly assisted by the presence of quick-browse windows, such as (1) live “go there” links from the Tutorial (in a window) to specific locations, (2) live “go there” links from Help to specific locations, and (3) a generated Sitemap (a simple rendering of the access-controlled TOC hierarchy). Further, it is desired to support random-access browsing of the links in any folder as a set.
One approach known to the art is to rely on the browser Back button, like regular websites. This meets all three requirements (assuming no actual reload on browser “Back” in the frameless architecture). However, using the Back button this can be a frustrating experience, and QuickPlace is different from average websites in that much heavier use is expected from authors and managers than would be typical of the average web user. Heavier use requires more efficient ways of getting around.
It is an object of the invention to provide a collaboration space application model for creating web applications that are aesthetically pleasing and present the user with a simple interface.
It is a further object of the invention to provide for creating web applications that are instantly created, instantly archived, team and project oriented, easy to use, created, accessed and administered via the Web, reusable, and extensible.
It is an objective of the invention to provide an improved user interface which is quick to load, takes up minimal screen space (at least while the user browses target pages), and which, while browsing a target page from the Quick-Browse setting, allows users to see and access the page's local setting so that they understand the page's context—e.g., its TOC location, folder, parent (responses), and/or ancestors (revisions).